


Catechism

by Queue



Category: due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-21
Updated: 2010-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:47:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queue/pseuds/Queue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for my own LiveJournal (qe2), 18 November 2004.</p></blockquote>





	Catechism

I lean back in my chair and look at him, silvered gold in the winter sunlight. I can chart the course of our partnership in the lines and creases on his beloved face, the familiar scars on those paradoxically elegant hands—the serration from a slipped saw, a healed half-nail, one knuckle swollen by an old break. Six months after we met, I would have said I knew everything about him. Five years ago, I would have sworn I knew nothing. The truth has always lain somewhere in between.

Our arguments, too, are familiar by now. Oh, we ring changes on them from time to time, varying the script, switching sides for the practice or to frustrate dangerous assumptions. But the catechism of our differences remains essentially the same—reason and emotion, rationales and love, settling and shifting against one another. The edges of animosity wear away; the heart of each matter stays constant.

Our current debate is no exception to that rule: we have been having this discussion—to put it politely—since the moment when, sweat-slicked and still shuddering, Ray laid his palms against my face in benediction and promised me a future I had not known existed. The push-pull of caretaking—which of us will admit to need and which be allowed to assuage that need—might have been easy to resolve had either of us been other than the alphas we are. As it is, that tension has been perhaps the single most dominant one of our shared lives, exacerbated rather than alleviated by our interdependence.

The key realization here, of course, is that no matter which way this argument comes out, it is impossible to lose it as long as we do not abandon it. Pursued, it yields joy, comfort, pleasure, strength—and trust, without which we would long since have shaken apart at the seams. To want and to be answered, to desire and to be allowed: this comprises our core.

I forget this often, distracted by the immediate gratification of the fight. But I am reminded of it now, tipped back in my chair, groin suddenly tight with wanting him. I can cede this round. There will be no loser. This is the balance we need.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my own LiveJournal (qe2), 18 November 2004.


End file.
